LOS ANGELES — Oprah Winfrey is used to running the show, whether it was her hit daytime TV program or the fledgling cable channel named for her and which she rules as chairman and chief executive.
But this week’s Oprah Winfrey Network shakeup, which included a 20 per cent staff layoff, thrusts her into a new dynamic: power-sharing with a top executive from the company that’s bankrolled OWN with $300 million-plus.
It’s a crucial moment for the media queen, who made OWN her next big move after The Oprah Winfrey Show, and for OWN itself: can Winfrey work as an effective corporate teammate with partner Discovery Communications to turn the struggling channel around?
There’s another bedrock question: does a big enough audience exist for the earnest, uplifting fare on Winfrey’s OWN, so antithetical to the blowsy charms of Jersey Shore, Keeping Up With the Kardashians and much else that’s popular on cable TV?
In Canada, the OWN brand is licensed and operated by media company Corus Entertainment Inc. (TSX:CJR.B) and mirrors much of the U.S. cable channel’s programming schedule.
As important as control might be to Winfrey, she’s also a savvy businesswoman and has been willing to take advice before — and not just from Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil or her other TV health and wealth proteges. Her syndicated talk show’s distributor made sure she stayed on track.
“In the past, when she was becoming too ‘New Age,’ or becoming too distant, which can come with celebrity and wealth, the folks at King World would do a survey” and pass the results to her, said Bill’ Carroll, an expert in the syndication market for media consulting firm Katz Media.
As a smart broadcaster, Winfrey heard the public “and adjusted to what they were saying,” Carroll said.
Winfrey started off slowly with OWN, busy wrapping her talk show’s 25-year run last fall with much hoopla. She began exerting more control after leaving daytime, and as part of the executive turnover that began five months after OWN’s January 2011 debut to disappointing ratings.
Christina Norman, who was dismissed as CEO in May 2011, had expressed hope that, within its first year, OWN would reach an average of about 400,000 viewers in prime-time among women ages 25-to-54. That would have been a doubling of the prime-time audience in that demo for Discovery Health, the channel OWN replaced.
For the year to date, OWN is averaging 318,000 total viewers in prime-time in the United States, a 9 per cent increase over the same period last year.
It was philosophy, not numbers, that Winfrey focused on at the channel’s launch. She was insistent that OWN would represent her talk show’s message of self-empowerment writ large across an entire channel.
“What if I could take every hero who inspired me, every lesson that motivated me, every opportunity that was ever given to me and give it to you,” Winfrey said in a promotional spot for OWN that showed her beaming against a computer-generated blue sky dotted by soaring balloons and puffy clouds.
Worthy, but is that entertainment? The high-water mark for OWN so far was the 3.5 million viewers for Winfrey’s exclusive interview with Bobbi Kristina Brown, Whitney Houston’s daughter, which aired earlier this month. The interview, while sensitively done, spun off the tabloid-tragic end to Houston’s checkered life.
The overhaul announced this week, including the layoffs of 30 staffers intended to reduce redundancies between Discovery and its partner in OWN, Winfrey’s Harpo Inc., brought Neal Kirsch, chief financial officer of Discovery’s U.S. networks, to OWN as chief operating officer and CFO.
(OWN launched with a 150-person staff double that of the typical cable channel, another invitation to trim.)
In January, Discovery Fit & Health executive Rita Mullen was brought in on an interim basis to work on programming and development after the departure of Lisa Erspamer from OWN.
Their work is cut out for them.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav, speaking to analysts last month, said there will be “significant additional funding to OWN” that will exceed its earnings over the next two years. That will mean adding to the $312 million Discovery has given the venture so far, the figure cited in Discovery’s annual report, but Zaslav said he expects the channel to become a “significant asset.”
Discovery owns 50 per cent of OWN but Winfrey holds operational rights when it comes to programming, marketing and decision-making authority for key management positions, Zaslav said. Beginning in 2016, she can require Discovery to “purchase all or part of (her) interest in OWN,” he added.
“Ultimately, it’s Oprah’s network. A lot of the policy decisions are with her,” said analyst Brad Adgate of media consultants Horizon Media Inc.
Winfrey’s real contribution will come in front of the camera, not from behind a desk, suggested analyst Carroll.
“She is what viewers are asking for. If she’s there, they’re there. If she isn’t, she isn’t,” he said.